The Overnight Test

I learned about this essay on creativity and business by Linds Redding from David Malki’s Twitter feed. In it, Redding relates his experience of working in an ad agency pre-Internet. He describes a process that mirrors closely the advice we present here repeatedly. He calls it The Overnight Test. In short, he and his writing partners would perform a massive brain-dump on the topic — throwing every idea… every kernel of an idea… onto paper. Nothing was ruled out. Nothing was judged. And almost everything as posted on the wall by the end of the night. The next mroning, they’d come in and start sorting through the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t. And they would critique one another — respectfully and honestly.